Draft lotteries provide randomized experiments. The most famous one is the Vietnam draft analysis by Angrist 1990 where he finds a 15% penalty to lifetime income caused by being drafted. There’s also little evidence of any benefit in Low-Aptitude Men In The Military: Who Profits, Who Pays?, Laurence & Ramberger 1991, which covers Project 100,000 among others, which drafted individuals who would not otherwise have been drafted either as a matter of policy or, in the ASVAB Misnorming, unrealized accident. (As Fredrik deBoer likes to say, if there’s any way it can possibly be a selection effect, then yeah, it’s a selection effect.)
Draft lotteries provide randomized experiments. The most famous one is the Vietnam draft analysis by Angrist 1990 where he finds a 15% penalty to lifetime income caused by being drafted. There’s also little evidence of any benefit in Low-Aptitude Men In The Military: Who Profits, Who Pays?, Laurence & Ramberger 1991, which covers Project 100,000 among others, which drafted individuals who would not otherwise have been drafted either as a matter of policy or, in the ASVAB Misnorming, unrealized accident. (As Fredrik deBoer likes to say, if there’s any way it can possibly be a selection effect, then yeah, it’s a selection effect.)